


maybe it could be you

by winchesters



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: F/M, High School AU, M/M, Multi, dumb french hunks, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchesters/pseuds/winchesters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras–the overachieving captain of the debate team and teenage revolutionary-gets stuck working with Grantaire–a slacker from the banileue of Paris–on a history project. A picture in a book about the 1832 student rebellion gives Grantaire the feeling that he and Enjolras are not such strangers after all...and suddenly both of their worlds are changed irreversibly. But what happens when being friends isn't enough? Can Grantaire and Enjolras navigate the world of corrupt school administrators, class warfare, and first love? </p><p>"If I'm going to die out here," Grantaire says, "I'd rather it be with you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So it's been a really busy week with college apps and AP classes and all that good stuff, but I really love this idea and wanted to put this out for all y'all. My French is more conversational than grammatical, so hopefully it makes sense. Please enjoy + review/comment/like if you feel inclined.

 

 

Thursday, raining hard, the city awash in fluorescents. Enjolras catches the early train to school, his satchel heavy with library books and the borrowed ‘History of the French Revolution’ that he promised he’d return to Mme Brune. The city is still sleepy at six a.m., the train rattling past rows of apartments that stretch and yawn beneath the grey sky. Lycee Saint Germain didn’t open until seven, so Enjolras seeks shelter in a nearby cafe–the Musain, a favorite amongst pupils and teachers alike. Normally he avoids such establishments; the crowds and lively atmosphere are hardly conducive to efficient studying. Besides, Enjolras doesn’t care much for other teenagers. He has his handful of friends, all of them ambitious, dedicated students like himself, and he generally refrains from socializing with others if he can help it. Not to say that he’s not willing to mingle with the masses: a run for student council last year had forced him to ensure popularity amongst the general student body, which meant fraternizing with everyone from the footballers to the chess club. He’d been beat out by the popular Maurice Auge, whose campaign had promised vending machines in the cafeteria. Enjolras has yet to see any snack dispensers at Saint Germain, in the cafeteria or otherwise. This is his last year of secondary school, and he’s glad that he opted for captain of the speech and debate team over a student council position (at least, that’s what he tells himself).

“Enjolras!” Combeferre comes worming his way through the crowd of damp students, a coffee in one hand and a world history textbook in the other. “Salut,” he says, dropping his backpack and textbook beside the table.

“Salut,” Enjolras replies, taking another lengthy pull on his coffee (black, one sugar). “Comme ce va?”

Combeferre laughs, shakes his head.

“Marie’s cat had kittens yesterday,” he says, “I was up all night listening to the little guys meowing. Cute as hell, I’ll tell you.”

Enjolras has never been particularly swayed by cuteness, but the photo that Combeferre shows him of the tiny creatures warms the cockles of his heart. He and Combeferre while away the next half hour, discussing their upcoming social sciences project and how Enjolras might have flunked that maths test from last week. When school opens they’re the first ones through the door.

 

Grantaire is late, again. He missed the first train from St. Duchane, and had to sprint the four blocks from the station on Rue Victor to the gates of Saint Germain. Now he’s the only one in the halls, squelching along in a damp jacket and soaking sneakers from where he splashed through a flooded gutter. He should get a hall pass before heading to first period social sciences, but he doesn’t. He’s not dreadfully late but everyone still swivels around in their seats when he bursts through the door and makes his way, dripping, to his desk while Mr Martin scolds him for being tardy. He slides into his seat in the back row, next to some kid named Pierre who hasn’t said a single word the entire school year and has likely never handed in an assignment. He’s Grantaire’s only friend in the class.

“As I was saying,” Mr Martin continues, “this project should be interesting, and will allow you to showcase all that you have learned this semester. The topic? A full-length research report on a cause important to you, and the people who have fought for it. Oh, and you will be working in pairs.”

Chatter breaks out as students vie for partnerships with their friends, and Grantaire turns reluctantly to Pierre, who gives him a solemn nod. But Mr Martin clears his throat, and the room falls silent.

“I will be assigning you a partner,” he says, jabbing a yardstick in the general direction of Monique and Louis, who are already necking in celebration. Grantaire’s heart sinks–he’ll probably get stuck working with some rich snob like Geoffry or one of the popular girls like Lucile, who look at him like he’s something that crawled out of the gutter.

Pierre goes to Sonia, a quiet, pretty flutist. Grantaire stares at his desk, wondering who will be unlucky enough to call themselves his partner.

“Grantaire,” Mr Martin calls, “you will be working with Enjolras.”

Great. Of all people, he had to get stuck with Napoleon Bonaparte himself. Grantaire’s only been at Saint Germain for a few months, but he had recognized early on that Enjolras belonged to a group that he would never be part of. The curly-haired wunderkind was everything that he wasn’t: smart, dedicated, ambitious, aloof. Grantaire grabs his backpack and heads to the empty desk beside Enjolras, who is already writing intently in a notebook.

“Salut,” says Grantaire, wondering if the greeting is too informal for the stern-looking student. “I’m Grantaire.”

Enjolras doesn’t look up from his writing.

“I know.”

Awkward. Grantaire bounces his knee up and down, fingers the hem of his jacket.

“So, any ideas?”

Enjolras sets his pencil down with a sigh, glances over at Grantaire. Dieu his eyes are blue, Grantaire thinks.

“Yes,” he says. “The student rebellion of 1832. I feel that it mimics our current situation, although in our case a shoddy school system has replaced a corrupt government.”

“What,” Grantaire begins. “Are you talking about?”

Enjolras turns in his chair to face Grantaire. His gaze is almost frighteningly intense.

“The entire Parisian school system is corrupt. The administration at Saint Germain looks the other way when wealthy students cause trouble...but they don’t look so kindly on anyone with a lower social standing, do they? Payoffs, bribes...the entire system is about as righteous as a bunch of convicts!”

Grantaire is slightly stunned.

“D’accord,” he says slowly. “I mean, I’m not really so great at this stuff, so whatever you want to do is fine.”

Enjolras looks triumphant.

“Bon. We’ll begin with an exploration of the 1832 Parisian government, already rife with corrupt Bonapartists after the revolution-”

 

Grantaire meets Eponine at the station just after four, where she and a gaggle of girlfriends are drinking mochas and chatting. The train to St. Duchane comes whistling into the station, and Grantaire and Eponine elbow their way into the first car. The other girls from the banlieue sit together in the front, giggling and texting and cursing their teachers, but Eponine selects a seat in the back beside Grantaire.

“Comme ce va?” She inquires, leaning against his shoulder. Grantaire tells her about his project, how he got stuck working with the biggest brainiac freak in the class. Eponine’s eyes widen at the mention of his name.

“Enjolras? Grantaire, he’s so dreamy! You lucky bitch!” She sighs, presses her shoulder to the smeary train window. “And all his friends are cute.”

Grantaire knows that she’s talking about Marius, the awkward skinny kid in Eponine’s history class who has doe eyes and a gentle laugh.

“People say they’re freaks,” says Grantaire. He means Bossuet, of course, and the kids like him. Rough kids from the banlieue. Kids whose parents come home late or drunk or not at all. Kids like him and Eponine, although it hurts to think about it like that.

“Whatever,” Eponine scoffs. “At least he’ll do all the work for you.”

By the time the train rumbles into the station outside St. Duchane, she’s sound asleep with her head on his shoulder. She looks a lot younger when she’s sleeping, and he doesn’t want to wake her up.


	2. with you, at dusk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grantaire experiences true academia. Enjorlas experiences what he thinks might be love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter for you lovely folks. Please review/whatever.

"You're lucky," Eponine tells him as they share lukewarm beers on the balcony of her parent's flat. The Thenardiers are never home, and don't seem to notice the alcohol that goes missing from their fridge every weekend. "He's _such_ a dreamboat." 

Grantaire rolls his eyes and takes a long pull on his beer. Enjolras might exude confidence, but he doesn't exactly ooze sex appeal. It's  hard to imagine him doing anything involving tongues or roaming hands. 

"He's _so_ bossy, 'Ponine," Grantaire complains. "Tells me that I have to do a shit ton of research over the weekend or 'we won't achieve a satisfactory mark on the assignment'. What a loser, eh?" 

Eponine shrugs, takes another sip of beer. Three stories below, Bossuet and the other boys are engaged in a drunken football match. Their shouts drift up on the cold night air, their curses and laudations. 

"Anyway," he continues, "it's the weekend. I don't want to talk about school." 

So they talk about Alexis and Daniel's fight last night, how Bossuet broke a bottle over someone's head at _Les Deux Lions_ on Tuesday night, about how Eponine's little sister asked her what tweaking means. Grantaire looks sideways at Eponine and thinks that she looks very beautiful in the light from the high street lamps and the shitty fluorescents and that if he was Marius he would want to kiss her. He thinks that the world is a very unfair place sometimes and for a second he thinks about the corrupt government after the French Revolution. Then he drinks more beer and watches the sun going down, red and orange streaks bursting from behind the banks of grey clouds. 

Three floors down, Bossuet and Salim are brawling. Grantaire groans and drains his beer. The world looks softer through the bottom of a bottle. 

 

Enjolras comes home to a cold, silent house. He lets himself in through the backdoor, snatches an apple from the bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter. A note taped to the fridge promises dinner ready by five–it's already six thirty, so he goes upstairs and locks himself in his bedroom. He has a debate next Monday, but he can't bring himself to work on any of his arguments right now. It's something banal anyway, about nutrition in school lunch programs. He'll give it a political spin, of course, work in how poverty levels correspond with childhood obesity rates. He flips open his notebook, stares at the page of scrawling that he did in Social Sciences earlier. He wonders if Grantaire has done any work on the project. It's doubtful, he thinks. Kids like Grantaire don't pull their weight. And then he feels guilty for lumping the gentle, dark-haired boy in with the rough kids from the _banileu_. He likes Grantaire–likes that the other boy didn't balk at getting stuck with the class know-it-all. 

The phone rings and it's Combeferre. 

" _Salut_." 

"I need your help," says Combeferre. "I'm supposed to be writing an argument _against_ abortion and I can't think of _anything_ that doesn't sound condescending or just plain awful." 

Enjolras straightens, turns on his desktop computer.

"Okay," he says. "Let's start with the Catholic church…" 

An hour later he hangs up, having helped Combeferre hash out a rudimentary plan for his argument. He hears the front door open downstairs, the click of high heels on marble tile. His mother doesn't come up the stairs. He doesn't expect her to. He spends the rest of the evening ploughing through a calculus assignment that's not due until Wednesday–no one ever accused him of slacking off. He turns his light off around midnight, abandoning his biology homework for the next day. Pale moonlight filters through the curtain, lying in patches across the floor. Enjolras wonders, strangely, what Grantaire is doing at the moment. 

 _Probably drinking and smoking with his friends_ , he thinks, _like a normal teenager._ The idea makes him feel oddly sad. 

 

By the time Monday rolls around, Enjolras has churned out a good three pages of research, as well as a thesis for their project. In third period Social Sciences, Grantaire produces a single wrinkled page of notes, scrawled in handwriting that suggests they were taken on some form of public transportation. 

"Is that all?" Enjolras queries, trying to hide his disappointment. 

"Sorry," Grantaire offers. "It was a rough weekend." 

Enjolras quells the frustration swelling in his chest.

"Sure," he agrees. "Don't worry about it, okay? Why don't you come to the library with me after school?"

Grantaire looks surprised by the offer, but nods slowly.

" _D'accord_." 

Enjolras thinks that it might be the first time that anyone's ever actually offered to help him with something like this. Branded a slacker early in the year, his other partners probably resigned themselves to completing the assignment alone, then took the credit and threw Grantaire to the dogs. At lunch, as Enjolras joins _les amis_ at their usual table in the cafeteria, he sees Grantaire sitting with a pretty dark-haired girl a few rows away. They might be siblings; he's never noticed that Grantaire had a sister. Enjolras realizes, suddenly, that he's looking forward to their afternoon meeting. 

 

Grantaire stares at himself in the cracked mirror above the sink in the boy's bathroom. His palms have been sweaty since third period, which was coincidently when Enjolras arranged a 'study session' after school. He tried assuring himself that they were completely exclusive events, but he's pretty sure that the reason he feels like his stomach is full of a thousand tap-dancing grasshoppers is that a golden-haired boy named Enjolras asked him out–whoa, no–asked him to _meet him in the library after school_. He smoothes his wild tangle of hair down–it doesn't work–and hurries from the bathroom. The library is cool and quiet, a place Grantaire generally avoids. In September Bossuet–and by extension Grantaire–got kicked out of the library for looking at porn on a school computer, and Grantaire hasn't really been back since. He finds Enjolras at one of the desks in the back, hidden away behind the historical texts and autobiographies. 

"Hey," Grantaire says, dropping into an empty chair. "What are you working on?"

Enjolras stows away his copy of _Hamlet_ and gestures to a stack of thick volumes.

"I assembled some materials," he announces. "Just a few books on the French Revolution, and most of these history books have chapters on the June Rebellion." 

"Huh." 

Grantaire picks up one of the books–entitled _A History of Paris–_ and leafs through it. Nearly two hundred pages of dense print flash by, punctuated by the occasional color picture. 

"Looks deadly," he comments. Enjolras glances sideways at him and smiles.

"We'll make quick work of it between both of us," he says. His voice is low, commanding. Grantaire gulps. They take notes in silence for nearly two hours–Grantaire asking the occasional question about history or politics–and when the five o'clock bell rings they duck out the back door of the library into the chilly evening air. It's nearly dark outside, the buildings looming pale in the blue dusk. 

"You take the train, don't you?" Enjolras asks, nodding in the general direction of the station. Grantaire scoffs–the houses in this part of the city are palaces compared to the dingy council housing flats. 

" _Oui_. _Et toi_?" 

Enjolras gestures to the street, hazy grey, the streetlights just flicking on. 

"I walk," he says. Grantaire nods. 

 _"_ Must be nice," he replies, then realizes how rude that probably sounded. "I mean, to live so close." 

Enjolras offers him a thin smile, and there is a sudden and deep sadness in his blue eyes.

"Yes," he says slowly. "It's alright." There is a long, slightly awkward pause, and then he pushes one of the books into Grantaire's hands. "Would you look over this tonight?" 

Grantaire accepts the weighty volume, meets Enjolras' piercing eyes. 

" _D'accord_ ," he agrees. "I'll, uh, I'll see you tomorrow." 

Enjolras nods, his movements sharp, decisive, and then he turns and heads down the wide avenue, into the hazy dusk. Grantaire watches him go, the book a comforting weight cradled against his chest, and he wonders if Enjolras is experiencing the same rush of emotions that he is. He boards the train with a sensation of slight panic building in his chest. Okay, so he thinks that Enjolras is smart, and nice, and good company, and pretty hot. So what? 

_He's a rich boy from the city, you're a kid from the banileu with a dead mom and a drunk deadbeat for a father. His parents are probably doctors or lawyers and he'll grow up and be just like them. There's no way in hell someone like him would ever go for someone like you._

And then he remembers the way that their hands touched when Enjolras handed him the book, and his heart feels like someone's pumped it full of helium. 

 

Enjolras freezes when he hears the roar of a departing train–Grantaire, he assumes, is slouched somewhere in its interior. He can imagine him now, as he has known him all year: the wild tangle of hair, the quick dark eyes, his smooth, agile fingers. _Zeut._ Enjolras shakes his head, willing himself to ignore the images creeping into his head: his fingers tangled with the other boy's, those shining lips pressed to his throat– _jesus_! When did he become such a hormonal  teenager? Enjolras plows home, hands deep in his pockets, exiling the thoughts from his mind. What is it about Grantaire, anyway? He's a slacker from the council estates, sarcastic and unmotivated. Enjorlas thinks about Combeferre and Jehan, and Courf: all good students, middle-class young men with the world at their fingertips, and-despite their quirks-successful. Perhaps it is the fact that Grantaire deviates from this mold that makes him so alluring. Or perhaps it is the way that he regards the weak sunlight falling shafts through the dusty library windows, the fact that unlike the boys that Enjolras knows, Grantaire remains unjaded by the wonders of the universe. 


End file.
